An Elegant Solution to the Soft Sensing Challenge

From warehouses to hospitals, soft robots are used in different places to assist humans in moving items, treating patients and gathering information. As interests in these robots keep growing, Carnegie Mellon University scientists are developing ways to give them the kind of sensing capabilities found in natural soft tissue. Most types of tactile skin require a wire for every single location where touch can be detected. The wires may eventually look like a large bird's nest when it comes to sensing large areas and this complicated electrical interface may break the system. "The wires might be fine inside hard cases such as smartphones and other devices, but if you're talking about fabric, skin or something else that's soft, then suddenly all those wires become sources of failure," said Carmel Majidi , an associate professor of mechanical engineering. To avoid this hassle, Majidi and Tess Hellebrekers from his Soft Machines Lab have developed an elegant solution: a soft magnetic skin with a single sensing element. Their findings were published in Advanced Intelligent Systems.